


Shiro Ha Aka Wo Nuri Tsubusu (White Smudges Out The Red)

by PrincexRaven



Category: Kuroshitsuji | Black Butler
Genre: Anorexia, Bloodplay, Dubious Consent, Extremely Dubious Consent, F/M, Female Pronouns for Grell Sutcliff, I'm Sorry, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Multi, Other, Self-Esteem Issues, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Trans Female Character, Trans Female Grell Sutcliff, relationships later on, this is mostly an introspection
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 23:02:46
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,897
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18647896
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrincexRaven/pseuds/PrincexRaven
Summary: White. White. White.Grell had once thought that everything in her life either was or should be a shade of the red she adored so, but by the time she realized Ana’s tendril-like fingers were wrapped tight around her heart, cold and unforgiving and never letting go, she knew they were white; as white and cold as the goddess herself.(Grell's self-hatred throws her deep into the abyss of the unimaginable)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is heavily impacted by my experiences as both an anorexic and a transgender person. Please don't leave hate towards either. You can view Grell as you so choose but please do not come here to critique my own interpretation in my work. "Ana" is the name many of us give to the illness or even to a psychotic manifestation of it as is mine and Grell's case. "Princess" is a reference to early pro-ana forums that insisted the ones suffering with it call ourselves "princes" and "princesses".

_White. White. White._

Grell had once thought that everything in her life either was or should be a shade of the red she adored so, but by the time she realized Ana’s tendril-like fingers were wrapped tight around her heart, cold and unforgiving and never letting go, she knew they were white; as white and cold as the goddess herself.

It had all started so simply. Grell knew she needed her muscles –in her arms, her chest, her stomach, her legs– to be able to do her job properly, and yet. Yet they made her feel so much more masculine, so much more _wrong_. Perhaps cutting back a bit on her protein intake would reduce the mass?

The next thing had been, of course, that extreme wasp-waists seemed to be the raging fashion; the smaller they were, the more attractive. Grell thought perhaps a narrower waist, a little curve to her figure, would make her look more feminine –she’d started to wear a corset under her work clothes, cinching it to the point of suffocation, had she needed to breathe, when she was alone at home, but it was not _enough_. The bones on her seemingly unbreakable body would never bend and mold like human women’s did, and the curve was gone as soon as the garment came off. Maybe losing a few more pounds would do the trick. Her arms were definitely thinner, more feminine, now, and her stomach veered more towards flat than defined. So cutting back had been a good idea; this must be, too. The only problem would be those too-narrow hips she detested becoming even narrower, but she supposed the rest of her appearance would cover up for that; plus maybe her wide shoulders would soften a bit, as well, and it was not like she had any breast tissue to lose, she thought bitterly.

Grell could very well remember the hunger for _red_ , the one that had always existed within her, the one she’d sated and let free on the streets of Whitechapel. She understood the hunger for _more_ , so where had this hunger for _less_ come from, blindingly _white_? But it did not matter. She kept a measuring tape on her nightstand, now, measured her waist every morning and every night and smiled to herself when she saw the inches disappear one by one. The muscles on her stomach were all but gone, now, she could only see the faintest trace of abs, and she wanted them gone, too.

Another feeling she was a stranger to was _guilt_ ; she had not felt an ounce of it when the scalpel had cut through the whores in the back alleys, when Mary Jane Kelly had been reduced to a pulp that vaguely resembled a woman, organs strewn about the room and patches of her body skinned, her face utterly disfigured, or when the revving of her scythe had created a symphony in the red she so loved together with the liquid sound of blood splattering, the crunching of bones giving way and the garbled sounds that fought their way out of Angelina’s throat. And yet, still, when someone had left chocolates in her desk on Valentine’s Day (probably as a joke, she thought, but at least they were good) and she put the second one in her mouth, it was undoubtedly guilt that shook her to the core like a whip cracking across her back.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ a soft, melodic voice said in the back of her head. ‘Ruining all of our hard work? Indulging like a pig? Is that what a lady should do?’ the voice insisted, until Grell’s eyes were welling with tears of shame as she dunked the chocolates in the trashcan, but something told her that was not enough, and soon the voice that had been soft turned into an unending scream of _“get rid of it, get rid of it, get rid of it!”_

It proved difficult to hold all of her hair with one hand while the fingers of the other rooted around her throat to try and trigger her gag reflex, but somehow she managed, as she doubled over and threw up everything she’d consumed that day. She should have been horrified when she realized it was just a cup of coffee and those two chocolates, but she wasn’t.

She was numb.

She was succeeding, too. Her skin was paler than ever (drier, too, but a bit of extra lotion could take care of that), her waist narrower, her abs gone, her once-hideous arms thin and frail and feminine. Like a proper high-class lady, and she could always hide the narrow hips under petticoats and bustles just like she hid _the other things_.

The voice that often spoke to her was as berating as it was comforting, and it was frankly disconcerting –but at least _this one_ sometimes had words of comfort for her, encouragements.

_Not like Him._ To him she was vermin, a disgrace, the shame of the Dispatch, nothing.

And Sebastian could be perfectly charming towards her, but she’d never been stupid, even if she put up the ruse just as perfectly well. She knew she was something to be used and nothing more, like she always was, for one reason or another, used and tossed away, maybe a night of shameful, hidden pleasure that ended with her discarded with the rest of the garbage and the weight of it _(Slutcliff)_ always squarely on her increasingly narrow shoulders. This voice didn’t want anything from her, just her best effort to achieve her goal. It lulled her to a sleep that had become increasingly frequent, exhaustion taking over her more often than not. It was gentle, calming, even if sometimes it was cruel, and it called her a lady in its delicate tones.

When she saw her first –and at some level she must’ve known it was just a figment of her imagination, but she was so _beautiful_ – she was standing in a corner of her room, snow-stark against the red, and Grell wondered how she had managed to fall in love, fall in thrall, with someone so utterly _white_. Exquisite features sculpted in white marble, translucent skin allowing for royal blue veins to show, the only spark of color in her; hair soft and white and floating like dandelions cascading down her back in moonlight-like waves, seeming so utterly delicate and fragile and yet so strong, almost colorless eyes like ice-shards between her pale lashes.

Then again, she’d managed to fall in love with _black_.

‘My name is Ana’ a voice, _the voice_ said through her white thin lips, and Grell recognized it instantly. The voice now had white hands that cradled her red heart carefully, shielding it from harm. ‘You need me and nothing more, Grell’, she’d said. ‘I can turn you into a princess, for that is what those who worship me are’.

She couldn’t have been saying anything but the truth, her white-rose beauty and wide clear eyes allowing for no lies.

She visited Grell frequently after that, and she soon realized no one could see the pale deity but her –which didn’t surprise her, considering what she was and the manner of things that happened in her realm. She sometimes curled up to Grell in bed, carding her fingers through her hair, and she was cold, as cold as the snow of her skin suggested, spreading frost through Grell’s veins.

Soon she realized she felt that cold constantly, from within her, whether Ana was physically present or not, but she’d trudged through worse things.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's shorter, sorry for that. Next one will hopefully be longer.

“It's only too bad you can't get tuberculosis” Ana comments offhandedly one day, perching atop Grell’s vanity, the white, translucent muslins she wears floating about her delicate legs. “You wouldn’t die from it, and the early stages make you look so dashing. Women all over the country have started imitating the symptoms, you know?”

Grell knows. Big, sparkling eyes with dilated pupils taking up almost all the space in the iris, reddish blushed cheeks on an otherwise snowy complexion –like the high fever that came with the chest disease. Sucked in stomachs and extremely thin limbs, frailness and protruding bones, marks of early consumption. Still, Ana was right. There were even women willing to die to achieve these looks, she could attest to it, she had reaped their souls from bodies starved, suffocated by the corsets or poisoned by the substances they’d use to give their eyes that dilated, glittering appearance.

She disrobed and surveyed herself in the mirror, smiling faintly. Sure, she could not get rid of everything she hated about herself, but there were the little things. She’d lost all the muscle in her upper arms, making her shoulders seem narrower; the defined abs were gone and her stomach was starting to suck in, several gross inches dropped off her waistline. Her hipbones jutted out just like Ana’s, a deep valley between them that she could almost pretend led to the intimate parts she should have. If she stood with her feet together, the tops of her thighs didn’t touch, and that added to the illusion when that unsightly part of her was tucked away. Her feet had always been small for her height, smaller even in high heels, and they looked better at the end of her new slim legs, the bones in her ankles fully visible, like little jewels. And if she turned around, she could see her shoulder-blades almost threatening to rip the skin like newborn wings, the knobs of her spine like beads on a rosary. 

Ana stood by her, smiling into their reflection, hands passing over every part of her that made her feel proud to finally come to rest on a collarbone so prominent you could pool water in the hollow of it. “You're doing such a good job, princess” she muttered, dropping a kiss to her cheek. They were almost comparable in pallor, now, and that made Grell’s fiery cascade of hair against her back look like bright blood splattered on snowed ground. She swelled and blushed at the praise, leaning into Ana before wrapping the corset around her waist and cinching it tight under her work clothes, the constant pressure a reassuring reminder. She would be beautiful. She would be.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Of course someone was bound to notice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! Here is the longer chapter I promised, and the start of the relationships in tags. You'll notice I have added Othello -I couldn't resist having my favorite green little geek be a part of this story. And more people who care about Grell are never a bad thing. Hope you enjoy!

Of course somebody was bound to notice.

Ronnie had seen his beloved senpai’s cheeks grow hollow, her cheekbones higher and sharper, her skin paler, her waist smaller. But she had confided in him that she had taken to wearing a corset, and that could not harm her like it could harm human women; the rest, he chalked up to her usual tricks with makeup. He was not the kind of person who would wear the stuff himself, but being friends with Grell had taught him how much of an art form it really was, and he’d always admired her skill.

This was supposed to be a routine collection, except for many reasons it was _very much_ not.

The demon had showed up unannounced, uncalled for, hungry and half-formed, leaving behind trails of a substance like half-congealed ink, claws and fangs ripe with venom, its teeth so big they could not be contained inside its mouth, morphing its features into something even more monstrous.

Grell had been watching the reel of the Cinematic Record, intent and focused, and the thing lunged at her from the shadows to get to the soul before Ronnie could even scream and warn her. Her wail of pain cut through the night air and Ronnie saw red and charged forward; Grell’s eyes were wide and there was a drip of intensely scarlet blood between her painted lips as she planted both palms on the ground and focused her eyes on the reel, determined to collect this soul if it was the last thing she did. She _trusted_ him and that was what felt worse, he thought fleetingly as his lawnmower Scythe reduced the demon to a pulp. He turned, pushing his hair back from his forehead and wiping the sweat off; Grell was on her knees, stamping her List, and that’s when he saw it.

Grell’s waistcoat was the kind that, in the back, looped, for lack of a better word, around her neck, and then covered her waist, leaving a good space where there was only shirt, and through the shirt the demon’s claws had ripped, leaving it in tatters, and her snow white back exposed, six angry red lines crossing it, blood and ichor trickling down and staining the wool of her waistcoat below. 

‘Phew’ Grell said through clenched teeth, wobbling as she stood up. ‘Will can complain all he wants about how I choose to wear this coat, but if I’d been wearing it “properly”, like he says, I don’t think I could have mended the disaster that thing made. Good thing it was salvaged, you did an excellent job, Ronnie. I’ll probably better get this checked out at the Infirmary just in case whatever was in its claws can hurt Shinigami and… why are you looking at me like that?’

Ronnie was not exactly looking at her. He was _staring_ , his mouth hanging slightly open. The image had been burnt into his retina, and it was not the claw marks –Grell got hurt in the field often enough (“stupidly reckless”, Will often said), and as much as he didn’t like it, he was used to it, knew she would be okay so long as it wasn’t a rogue reel attacking her.

It had been the view of her back _itself_ , ribs visible under skin stretched taut, the knobs on her spine so jutted out he could’ve put a finger in the space between each one, her scapulae almost fully separated from the muscle that was supposed to hold them flat. He tried to recount –when had he last seen her eat? When had they last gone out for lunch, when had she last bugged him so he’d buy sweets for her at expensive patisseries that were out of the range of his junior agent salary? When had he last seen her less than covered from chin to toe, only her face and hair visible? She didn’t even take off the gloves and show her hands anymore. With a start, he realized it had been about a year.

_A year_ , and now it was very clear what she had been doing in that space of time, why he’d found his Valentine chocolates in the trashcan that one day, why the pestering for pastries had ceased, why they never had lunch together anymore. And he was incredulous, and he was hurt –that she would do such a thing, that she would keep it from him, from her best friend. Why was she hurting herself like this?

‘Grell…’ he said slowly, cautiously. He knew how much his mentor was like a cat, accepting intrusions into her privacy only on her own terms, running away or attacking when such terms weren’t met. ‘Have… have you not been eating?’

Grell turned paler, if that was possible, and reached behind herself, her expression morphing into one of horror when her hands found the extent of her body that was exposed. _‘He’s judging you’_ Ana said softly in her ear, her blood running colder by the second. _‘He doesn’t understand. He’d probably try to feed you fattening things and sabotaging you’_ she droned on, and soon Grell was clenching her fists in fury.

‘What do you care?’ she spat, violently stepping into her junior’s space, the clack of her heels menacing. ‘Afraid I’ll be competition for you? We don’t even play in the same fields, Ronald! I’m not the least bit interested in tepid, stupid girls from Secretarial –or in children like you’ she finished venomously, trembling. 

Ron tried hard to swallow his tears; her rejection was to be expected. But he was afraid for her, for the woman he cared so much about, and so he spoke again.

‘I’m just worried about you! I don’t want –you can’t die from hunger like a human being, but you’ll go mad, you’ll go weak! When have you not heard a demon approaching? What if the next time you get the Thorns? You’re my friend, Grell, I don’t want you to die!’

_‘He’s lying. You know he is.’_ Ana said, sweet poison in her words.

‘You’re overstepping, Knox!’ she yelled, blotchy spots of red appearing on her deathly pale face, and ported away without another word, leaving Ronnie alone and desolate.

*******************************************************

She stumbled as she entered Othello’s lab. Of course she had been lying about going to the Infirmary –as if she’d let nurses and doctors who were no more than strangers poke and prod about the body she’d worked so hard to achieve, only to chastise her or have Will do it. Nobody understood, nobody but Ana, and she had never so clearly felt her solitude, but at least the pale goddess was with her now. And Othello was weird and self-absorbed enough that he probably wouldn’t even notice, excited about new demon venom to analyze.

‘Othello?’ she called out tentatively, and the green-haired little geek poked his head out from behind one of the piles of strange books.

‘Grell!’ he greeted cheerily. ‘It’s good to see you! I was even going to venture out to talk to you! You see, I’ve found a way to synthesize estrogen and progesterone! Now I just have to find out how to neutralize testosterone until the levels are at female status, and your figure will start to change radically! Of course surgery will take a lot more time, but this should make things a lot easier to deal with!’

_I’m another experimentation subject, how great_ , Grell thought tiredly, even though she was glad for the news, her voice sounding strangely bi-tonal inside her head, like her and Ana were one.

‘That’s great, Othello, but for now I just need you to take a look at an injury’ she muttered. ‘It comes with demon ichor for you to analyze and everything’.

Othello gave her a strange look, but nodded as she undid the bow on her neck and started unbuttoning her waistcoat, shrugging out of the ruined remnants of her shirt, wondering if Will would let her claim it as a work-related expense. She missed the way the small man started gaping as more of her upper body was revealed, each and every visible bone that she counted every night (collarbone, sternum, ribs, so on and so forth). She turned around before she could catch the look on his face, how his hands hovered unsure over her bony back, as if she could break merely by touching her.

‘Well? Is it very bad?’ she asked, and he snapped back to attention.

‘No, not really’ he answered, barely above a whisper, wiping the venom and blood off of her. ‘This venom makes the wounds very painful, but they’re superficial. Let me clean them properly and they should be gone in a couple of days. No scar. Just… out of curiosity, why did you come here? Not that I don’t want to see you, but this could have been handled faster at the Infirmary’.

‘You know how I feel about people seeing me without clothing’ she responded curtly. ‘You don’t much care about the body I was born with except to see how you can alter it. That’s… better than most of them up there’.

Othello nodded, forgetting she couldn’t see him, and finished cleaning her wounds. They didn’t even need stitches.

‘Would you let me take a blood sample to see about the testosterone thing?’ he asked tentatively.

‘Sure. What’s a little prick wound compared to what I have to take almost on the daily? And if it’s going to change my body for the better…’

Othello nodded again and ran in search of a syringe; when he came back, taking her arm to find a vein, he was alarmed that he could circle the whole of it with one hand. He knew he was aloof and that most of his colleagues seemed to think he noticed nothing outside of his experiments, but he didn’t live in another planet. Grell was hiding something, and judging by the state of her upper body, it couldn’t be anything good.

‘You know’ he commented offhandedly, inserting the needle into a bulging vein ‘estrogen changes the way fat deposits are distributed on your body. You’d get wider hips, for example. Maybe a little tummy, although that’s nothing someone as athletic as you can’t work off’.

The look of alarm in Grell’s face was obvious –well, horror rather than alarm. Bingo. So it was the weight itself she was concerned about, rather than it being a symptom of something else?

‘We’ll see about that’ she murmured weakly, mechanically. ‘I haven’t gained a pound in a very long time’.

It seemed like the last part had escaped her involuntarily, as she clapped her hands to her mouth, eyes wide, like she had said something she wasn’t supposed to.

‘Are you finished’ she stammered, and Othello nodded a third time. She picked up her clothes and did what could only be described as fleeing the lab, leaving Othello dumbfounded.

He could understand not having noticed something like this, as he scarcely saw her, and, true to his reputation, often barely looked at her even when she was there, but didn’t Grell have friends? People who cared about her even more than he did? He thought back to when Humphries from Collections had fallen ill, how everyone had noticed despite his best efforts to conceal the effects of the Thorns. How everyone had worried.

And he came to the conclusion that either Grell was a much better actress than even she claimed, hiding this from those closest to her, or _there was nobody close enough to notice_.

The thought left a bitter taste in his mouth, and he resolved to be more attentive of her from now on.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things have to get worse, before they get better. And oh do they get worse.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry to all the Sebastian fans and SebaGrell shippers reading this but at least in this chapter he's going to be an asshole and quite close to how he treats Grell in canon so forgive me.
> 
> Also yes hypersexuality is common in those with body image problems because someone wanting to fuck you, no matter how degrading the experience, means you must be at least a *little* attractive, right? Be worth at *least* something? Trust me, I speak from experience.
> 
> This is the chapter where the fic earns its rating and also where some of the tags come into play, so trigger warning and please be careful. Your safety comes first.

Grell’s mind was reeling as she ported out of Othello’s lab and into her flat. She was still shaking with fury over Ronnie’s words, over the look she’d seen in his eyes. Fuming, she undressed with trembling hands and stepped into her bathtub.

The boiling-hot water washed away the stink of the venom and pinked her deathly white skin, soaking her hair until it was almost as heavy as her body itself. She examined her hands –Ana had explained it was a price she had to pay, but she missed her long nails dearly. Now they were too brittle to be kept at that length, little half-moons close to the ends of her fingers. She still painted them cherry red; how had William described them once? “A whore’s decoration on a Reaper’s hands”. That one still hurt, like much of what William said.

But if she was going to be a whore, she thought, she’d be a damned good one. The world and the curse of her birth had cast her in that role and she was determined to hold her head high through it; being a whore meant at least that for a short space of time, _someone_ would look at her with _something_ other than disgust. She closed her eyes and dunked her head underwater, the look of horror in Ronnie’s face burnt behind her eyelids.

_And she had thought she could trust him_.

She was meticulous, as she always was. No trace of hair in her body. Perfectly gleaming nail polish with no chips. She curled her hair slowly when she dried it, until it fell around her like the waves of a red sea, and tied back some of it with a black ribbon, forming a bow in the back of her head. The design on her eyelids, heavy and black, was similar to how the gypsy fortunetellers with veiled lower faces in the sideshow circuses did theirs. But her mouth was uncovered, the same red as freshly spilled blood, stark against a face white as porcelain. She found a wide-necked dark crimson lace chemise and laced her favorite corset over it, a half-bust in burgundy silk with black lace detailing and steel boning that turned her torso into an hourglass. She donned the red garters and black stockings and her favorite boots, and then took to the bandages, forcefully making her form at least resemble her nature, teeth clenched in pain as she bound herself cruelly tight, covering it then with black French lace knickers. Sighing in the mirror, she adjusted the gloves and covered the whole ensemble with her coat.

_Call me a scarlet woman_ , she thought, rue and bitterness mixed with pride. _It’s what I am, in every sense of the word_.

With one last look at the polished glass, she opened a portal to the Phantomhive estate.

*************************************************

As she expected, Sebastian did not take long to materialize in the gardens where she was waiting for him, moonlight shining off the marble of her complexion, her red red mouth an open wound.

‘Is someone bound to die here tonight, Mr. Sutcliff?’ the demon asked silkily, eyes glittering with disdain. ‘If not, I’m afraid my master can’t entertain this late at night, much less such… creatures, as you’ he added, sharp and cold like the point of an icicle. She merely let her coat rustle as it fell to the floor, and smiled as wide and sensual as she could.

‘It’s _Miss_ Sutcliff, Sebastian. Or just Grell, if you’d prefer. As you must have surmised, I do not dress like this for work, nor do I have any business with your little master’ she said, matching his disdainful look and tone measure for measure, hands gliding over every inch of her revealed figure. The glowing red eyes widened, and fangs disturbed the falsely pleasant grin on Sebastian’s face. She knew it was her body having that effect. That and…

‘You smell like blood’ Sebastian almost growled. ‘It being you, I had assumed it was not yours, but…’

She’d known this would happen –that he would only starve for so long. That he despised her when she could match or outmatch him. But this fragile doll, this little princess, pale like snow and red like a rose and covered in blood just for him. The despair in her, that filled his nostrils, that beckoned him. She’d become the kind of meal she knew him to appreciate.

‘You promised your master not to make another deal while his still had its mark on you’ she whispered, gleaming peridot eyes sliding over to his gloved hand. ‘But you never said anything about favors, did you?’

Sebastian only stepped closer.

‘What kind… of favor?’ he inquired cautiously, irises fully red and pupils a barely-there slit now.

‘You’re starving, dear. You can’t have another soul, but what about the blood of a being like me, freely given and freely taken? It would sustain you for a while, and you can smell what you will taste on it. In return, all I want is you… for this one night, however you will take me’ she offered, and turned around. Lily-white skin on show as she made her hair fall forward, wounds reopened from the bath dripping cerise-red on the chemise and the low back of the corset, the bone in her shoulders pointed like an arrowhead. Offered and on display and vulnerable like she never was.

She didn’t see the brief nod of agreement that came after the restrained gasp she did catch before she felt Sebastian’s abnormally long tongue on her flesh, licking the paths the blood had made, heard the growl of non satiated hunger as his strong hands grabbed her waist and pinned her down. His tongue dug into the grooves the claws had carved into her skin, and she shivered, felt the matching throbbing pains both where he touched and below, between her legs, where what should not be fought against its confines. But she was a lady, and she would not let that happen.

The drawn-out sound of her chemise being ripped in halves that fell like petals to the sides of her body as Sebastian sought more skin and more wound was also unexpected, but she barely had time to mourn its loss as the hands returned to her cinched waist and forced her to bend, thankfully gloved hands flat on the ground, her knees in her silk stockings hitting the earth hard enough that she felt every little pebble dig into them, scratching them until they were raw with Sebastian’s movements, flesh bloody and silk torn only spurring him on. She felt breathless with each new dizzying pain –he was _feeding_ off of her, needed her in this moment like a mere starving human presented with steak, and if that made her a piece of meat she did not much care.

The lace of her knickers soon met the same fate as her chemise, and she felt the blunt slick tip of something pushing into her.

‘You should be… more careful… with a lady…’ she managed to grit out, but Sebastian only snarled behind her like the beast she had unleashed. The polished mask of the servant was gone and only Hell remained in its place.

‘You said “however you will take me” did you not?’ he sneered, pushing further, Grell’s palms slipping in front of her. ‘This is the only way I’d take someone like _you_ ’ he growled, sinking his knife-sharp fangs into Grell’s naked shoulder as he forced himself all the way in.

Grell screamed into the night, struggling to keep herself upright, parting her legs slightly. She knew Sebastian had made the claw wounds much worse, that she’d have to visit Othello again, but she didn’t care, she didn’t care about anything that wasn’t the fact that Sebastian, _her_ Sebastian, was inside her, was taking her, had turned into a beast for her. The blood coming from her shoulder soaked her hair falling down her collarbone in rivulets as she bent her head and let her upper back fall, and the beast that had been Sebastian growled lower and forced her up with one hand around her neck to lap up all of the precious crimson liquid, and more stars dotted Grell’s vision than there were in the night sky.

She needed both hands to stay steady, so she couldn’t rub herself through the bandages to climax faster, and she knew Sebastian wouldn’t bother to, so she canted his hips against him in such a way that she could at least feel some pleasure. He caught on to her intention and laughed lowly in her ear, making her color high in her cheeks, but he did angle himself against her prostate, purple blooming under his fingers until his claws appeared as well and left deep scratches on Grell’s abused neck. She yelled once again and rutted desperately, prompting Sebastian to find the apparatus of bandages she’d covered that unsightly part of her with, with the hand that was not holding her neck, her whole weight resting now on it, and she craned her head up instinctively, fighting for an air she didn’t really need; just as Sebastian gripped between her legs and the tears she’d been fighting back spilled, leaving spidery black trails on the pallor of her cheeks, she saw _her_ , sitting on a low branch, her muslins floating softly as if underwater, her hair and skin and eyes shining brighter than the moon.

No. _No!_ Ana, pure and perfect, couldn’t see her degraded like this, turned into this. Ana was lilies, white roses, baby’s breath, jasmine, purity, chastity, unsullied and unmarred, Ana was the moon and Artemis, silver and white, no red, no corruption. Her eyes gleamed with endless amusement, ice shards glinting in a pale December dawn, and the world around Grell spun as she forced her arms upwards and gasped.

‘Se… bas… Se… se… bas…tian…’ 

He only laughed, then pressed his palm between her jutted-out shoulder blades and pushed down so harshly Grell’s hands fully slid out from under her, her face colliding with the floor as Sebastian’s unsheathed claws dug into her back. She could feel the skin on her cheek tearing, blood and kohl and earth mixing and caking onto it, and she didn’t even have the strength to muster the anger she always invoked when someone went for her fair face in a fight.

Unfortunately, Sebastian noticed.

‘What, no token protest about attacking a maiden’s face? I’ve never seen you so weak. Could you even handle your Scythe, if you were to invoke it, I wonder? Where is the near-god that taunted and wounded me in the rooftops of Whitechapel, who nearly severed off my arm because I’d tried to go for your face? I don’t know if this new you pleases me, all meek and obedient, or disgusts me even more. Where is the fire I once saw in you, the only thing about you I could have respected?’ he sneered, gripping her between the legs again and angling himself just so, mercilessly pounding into her.

Sebastian was cruel. Sebastian was a monster, and she’d known this when she came to him and she knew this as he showed off his abilities and made her climax between sobs, suckling blood from the wound he himself had inflicted on her shoulder, digging his tongue between the separated folds of deepened clawing marks as if they were labia and he was trying to reach her center, and the whole time Grell was looking at Ana and silently begging for forgiveness, not giving into full-on crying until Sebastian emptied into her and dropped the rest of her body onto the muddy earth like an used rag, still resisting as he laughed at her once again.

‘It has not been a bad exchange of favors, I must say’ he commented casually, discarding the ruined gloves and using them to wipe the blood off his mouth. ‘I’m cautious to say this, but perhaps you can come to me again if you should desire a similar arrangement. Just _don’t_ ’ he emphasized that last word, tone low and dangerous ‘ever disturb my lord. Are we clear?’

Grell only nodded weakly. When Sebastian was at last out of sight, she crawled behind a tree and shakily took off her own torn gloves; on her knees, she punched her stomach with one hand, finally crying loudly, brokenly, the raw palm making her fingers and the lace sticky, and pushed the fingers of the other hand down her throat until she had emptied herself even more, bile pooling beneath her as she coughed, the only thing left in her stomach. Her hand was so far down her throat her sharp teeth were cutting into the tendons on her wrist where there should have been more flesh, the blood Sebastian had loved so only making her gag more.

Barely able to stand on her own two feet, she picked up the coat from the floor, miraculously salvaged for the second time that night, and threw it over her body, trembling violently. She huddled against the trunk of a tree, knees drawn to her chest, and only when the fingers of Dawn started coloring the black sky golden and rosy could she gather the strength to port back home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a terrible person and I'm sorry


End file.
